


Amity

by Anonymous



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Canon Compliant, Hanahaki Disease, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-16 02:19:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16076300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: The house of Amicitia suffers the flower-spitting sickness with pride: it is the manifestation of the Shield’s devotion to Crown and King, absolute, and unyielding. You will protect him and you will sacrifice for him, and one day you will die for him, because you love him.If this is love, Gladio thinks, it's pretty damn overrated.





	Amity

**Author's Note:**

> [Hanahaki disease](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Hanahaki_Disease): if you are in unrequited love with someone, you vomit flowers.

  


The hanahaki was said to have begun in Tenebrae, when the first sylleblossoms grew from the heart of the Oracle for the Founder King. She had loved him almost as long as she had lived, and upon her death one cold spring Tenebrae's royal gardens ran violet and blue with grief. Since then, the flowers born of the sickness have become a symbol of devotion, and House Amicitia names its children for them in honor of the bloodline's oath to protect and serve.

Gladio asked Ignis once if House Scientia has traditions like that too.

"Nothing so moving, I'm afraid," Ignis says, and explains that House Scientia's naming conventions more closely align to the Infernian's long-ago gift to mankind, or the house's predisposition to elemancy. "So ... you're telling me you have to fall in love with him."

"Sort of," Gladio says, and explains that Dad's half-seriously considering passing him over as Shield on account of Iris' devotion to Noctis being stronger than Gladio's own. "Got tips?"

Ignis seems to be considering the question, and Gladio is momentarily glad to have _one_ friend who takes him seriously. "Noctis has many good qualities."

"So?"

"Just observe him," Ignis says. "You said you were wrong about him before, right? Put aside what you think you know, and try to see him as he is. Maybe you'll find something worth protecting."

Scion of a noble house and Noct's future adviser and chamberlain, Ignis Scientia is nothing like Gladio. At first, Gladio had worried they wouldn't get along. Then Ignis had shown up to Crownsguard training, hands clenched behind his back and lips set with tension he hadn’t yet learned to hide, and in the time since then proven himself much more than the stuffy scholar Gladio had imagined him to be. Ignis makes up for all the things Gladio is not, and most of all he thoroughly understands Gladio's complaints about having to babysit a bratty princeling and be grateful for the privilege.

"Don't _you_ ever worry about your job?"

Ignis hums. "I'm quite dispensable. The Citadel has many scholars, any of whom could replace me at a moment's notice..."

"—Nah," Gladio says decidedly. "Noct'd be completely lost without you." The Citadel is full of dignitaries and scholars but there's not a man in Insomnia as close to Noctis as Ignis is, not even Gladio himself.

"I'll take the compliment," Ignis says, and Gladio's satisfied at the rare hint of a smile.

 

A week later evening at dinner Gladio swallows wrong, and the mouthful of carrots he hacks back up contains shards of gray and blue mixed in with the orange. He makes his apologies and then pokes at the new offenders with his knife and fork, unfurling them carefully by the side of his plate.

Clarus Amicitia observes the flower petals, night blue and grey in a neat pile atop the patterned porcelain, and nods his approval. “About time, Gladio."

Triumph sinks in Gladio's heart, nothing like butterflies.

 

* * *

 

 

Alternate Tuesdays Noct has elemancy lab with Ignis, and Gladio stops by after to help clean up. The laboratory is on the way from his own prior appointments, and if he helps out, maybe then Ignis will actually be on time to Crownsguard training for once.

"Would you?" Ignis asks. "Get the cure, if you could."

"In a heartbeat. What use is a Shield who's chronically sick anyway?"

"Where your heart lies, there the flowers follow," Ignis recites. The Shields who had the hanahaki did a better job, didn't they? People try much harder to protect something they love."

"You know a lot for someone not named Amicitia."

"I paid attention in history class," Ignis replies.

One of the round-bottomed magic flasks on the table is still half-filled with proto-lightning. Ignis slips a catalyst from the box on the bench and drops it in. The stray sparks in the flask gather to form a miniature storm and coalesce into a metallic sphere still crackling with electricity, which Ignis tips into a slot in the containment case at the front of the room. Ignis had explained that elemancy is traditionally the sole domain of the Lucis Caelum line, but House Scientia is a distant scion in which magical potential runs strong. Gladio knows Ignis had worked especially hard to develop that potential to its full capacity.

It's pretty cool, Gladio thinks, and has to turn aside to cough a stray flower into his handkerchief.

 

* * *

 

 

Around the same time that the Wall was built, Lucian medical research uncovered the inner workings of the hanahaki and devised both a full cure and various management regimens. The only people who still suffer from it are those bound by traditional reasons, like Gladio, and those who either cannot undergo the surgery or cannot afford it.  Gladio himself will follow in his father's footsteps and take suppressants for the rest of his life. He will live as long as he otherwise would, and he will suffer little adverse effect from the hanahaki aside from coughing the occasional flower.

Thursdays after Crownsguard training, Gladio dry swallows his pills from an unmarked bottle and goes to get lunch and shoot the shit with Ignis. "You ever think you could have been shield," he says once, "if it wasn't a bloodline thing?"

"No, I couldn't," Ignis replies instantly. "Noctis needs someone to keep his head when he can't. I am not that person."

"Ignis, you're the most levelheaded person I know."

"Am I, now."

"Hmm." Gladio thinks about delivering 2 a.m. coffee and sympathies to Ignis' apartment, five storeys above Gladio's own, on many occasions when Noct had a final paper due. "When it comes to everything _but_ Noct."

"Case in point." Ignis is trying to keep a straight face and failing, just a little. "The best favour I could do myself is to know my limits. And I have absolute faith in you, Gladio."

"... can I ask why?"

"You made Crownsguard at eighteen. You're the only person King Regis trusts with Noct's life.  You don't lose sight of what's important. And you love him," Ignis finishes, as if that explained everything.

"Some days I don't even like him." Gladio's saved by the chime of his phone alarm, which indicates he has to beg off to go meet Noctis in the training room. His once and future king, who is also his once and future crush. Supposedly.

“Don’t beat him up too badly,” Ignis calls after him. "He still has essays to write later."

Three times a week Gladio crosses the Citadel to meet Noctis in training room number thirteen, takes his cheek, endures his complaints, knocks him down a hundred times so he can get up a hundred and one. Noctis might be royalty and Gladio’s liege and friend, but he’s also a scrawny scrap of a brat nowhere near prepared to be king.

If this is love, Gladio thinks, it’s pretty damn overrated.

 

* * *

 

Noctis turns eighteen at the end of a mild summer, the evening air warm and the sky cast in many brilliant shades of orange and pink over Insomnia's city walls. Atop the balcony overlooking the Citadel, he ascends the steps to the center podium and addresses his kingdom with the beginnings of grace. Watching the live feed of the broadcast on the display screens on either side of the courtyard, even Gladio has to admit the kid’s come a long way.

Ignis the scriptwriter waits in the wings, smiles when Gladio catches his eye.

From his sentry post by the balcony Gladio watches the evening pass away in a swirl of glittering festivities. Noct flits from conversation to conversation with untouched champagne flute in hand; Ignis cuts a methodical path to the dignitaries in attendance and shakes every hand, and Gladio catches a glimpse of chocobo-blond hair amidst the camera flashes from the paparazzi.

Later, the courteous smile Noctis has worn all evening will fade to a shadow as he collapses in the passenger seat of Ignis' car, one of the Citadel's on long-term loan. Past midnight, Insomnia's ordinarily busy streets are empty of traffic. Gladio watches Ignis' reflection in the windshield superimposed over the city roads outside, Ignis' gloved hands steady on the wheel, Noct already nodding off in the passenger seat, and surreptitiously coughs another few petals into his handkerchief.

 

* * *

 

Their first night out of the Crown City they camp at a haven just outside Insomnia’s walls. While Ignis sorts through ingredients for dinner Gladio sets up the portable stove; has a moment's pride at how much they have managed to fit in the Regalia's trunk, then coughs and hacks up an entire pile of petals next to the fire.  He hadn’t counted on proximity to Noct worsening his condition, and as he waits for the spell to pass he thinks distantly he’ll have to adjust his suppressants.

Noctis and Ignis have both averted their eyes. Prompto sifts interestedly through the drying petals with a stick. "Hey, leave it,” Gladio says. “Might be contagious or something.”

“Oh, I’m immune," Prompto replies. "Had them out when I was sixteen." As if the hanahaki was all of a set of baby teeth to him.

Now a wind picks up, picking up several bone-dry petals from the pile, which drift a little way and then land softly on the ground. It reminds Gladio of Tenebrae before the fall, that spring when Dad had taken him and Iris to visit. The sylleblossoms had fallen then with the last winds of spring, grey and night-blue, like Noct’ eyes.

 

* * *

 

 

Noct turns twenty-one on the way to Cape Caem.

After dinner Ignis goes about checking supplies and organizing inventory as if nothing has changed, but Gladio knows what it takes out of him to stay this way. After years Gladio's learned to count the number of Ebony cans crumpled in the cup holder on the driver's side of the Regalia, catch Ignis' subtle shift from fastidious to overly critical. Now Gladio circles around the folding table to peer upside down at the map Ignis is poring over, helps work out a route that will let them replenish curatives, make a delivery stop at the hunter outpost, pass the laundromat before Prompto runs out of clean pants and still make it back to Lestallum in time to turn in their hunt.

Outside the tent, the campfire burns low as they stack the last of the cookware. Beyond the soft glow of the haven's protective sigils the night is abuzz with insects and wildlife.

Ten years ago, Tenebrae burned, and the Oracle’s star dimmed as Lucis retreated within the Wall. This summer, a newspaper landed in Ignis' hands and set the crown prince adrift, a stranger in his own country, without even time to mourn his father.

The Crownsguard drilled into Gladio the ability to keep a clear head in all situations, and his doing so is integral to their survival now. There is no turning back. In the chamber of his heart where sympathy should lie, there is only the flat awareness that everyone has lost something.

There will be time for grief later.

Noct has curled up on the far end of the tent tonight, his back to the wall, his face smooth and untroubled in sleep. Gladio tosses a night-blue petal into the campfire embers and then ducks halfway through the tent flap, unrolls the last sleeping bag in the empty space next to the entrance. "Must be nice to be able to sleep so soundly."

"It's his own way of handling things," Ignis says. "Gladio. How are you doing?"

"I'll be fine." It's Gladio's job to die in Noct’s place, and gods know he’ll do it without blinking. But a shield is more than a sacrifice. Gladio had not been focused enough to see Noctis through the Archaean's wrath unscathed, nor strong enough to defend Noctis against Ravus Nox Fleuret.

Now, watching Ignis watching the sleeping bag rise and fall with Noctis' breathing, Gladio can't help thinking he has failed in some monumental way.

 

* * *

 

 

In the Tempering Grounds, Gladio tries to keep Noct’s face in his mind to remind himself what he is fighting for, and realizes he can’t.

 _You love him_ , Ignis had said with the weight of conviction one long-ago day, and Gladio hadn't understood how Ignis could be so sure when Gladio himself isn’t. Too late, Gladio realizes he should be _there_ , with Noctis, not here fighting ghosts long dead and buried. No self-doubt should ever compromise his duty. This is not the loyalty expected of an Amicitia.

It's Ignis' face that Gladio sees now, the creases of concentration between Ignis' eyes as he holds a parry, the flash of surprised delight the first time Ignis had bested Gladio in a fight by using Gladio's own strength against him. When they sparred Gladio always had the edge in strength, but Ignis more than makes up the difference in speed and versatility. Ignis had taught Gladio focus, centering, clarity of mind—

Gladio heeds that advice now, one step, one swing of his sword, one transfer of weight at a time. He calls to mind Ignis' calm composure, steady hands, the clean snick of twin daggers through the air, his heartbeat a metronome to Gladio's own. The momentum carries Gladio forward, the greatsword in his hands arcs downward to meet the Blademaster's in a clash of sparks.

 

 

The day Gladio returns, after Noct and Prompto have gone to sleep, Ignis asks, "Did you find what you were looking for?"

Beneath the familiar and calming warmth of the campfire, phantom pain throbs through the healing scars. The tempest that has raged in Gladio's heart since the news of Insomnia's fall has slowed to a simmer. Father is gone. Jared is gone, and Iris is all grown up. There is no longer a hearth and home to return to, and all the things Gladio might still have had to look forward to no longer exist.

All things but this: the four of them and a car and a tent. Beside him Ignis is cleaning the last of the vegetable stew from the pot, quiet and reliable, the space he occupies a comforting presence at Gladio's side. The firelight glints off Ignis' glasses so that Gladio cannot see his eyes.

Gladio swipes a night-blue petal from the corner of his lips, crumples it between his fingers and tosses it aside. "I think so," he replies.

 

* * *

 

 

They spend a week at the outer edges of Cleigne hunting the area at the foot of Mt. Ravatogh for saberclaws by day, daemons by night. One evening Gladio returns to the tent to pick up his phone, sees Ignis over by his side of the tent holding the blue-capped bottle usually stowed away with the rest of the medication; sees Ignis pick two pills out of the bottle and dry swallow them.

It would be unfair to stay silent. “Ignis.”

Ignis turns, consternation flitting across his face.  “Gladio. I— I apologize. I misjudged how long we'd take, and we won’t pass a pharmacy for days—“

“It’s fine, no need to explain, take it,” Gladio says, waving a hand. That’s not what bugs him but he can’t pinpoint what _is_. “How long have you—?”

A pause, a series of unidentifiable emotions passing over Ignis' face Gladio hadn't known existed.  “Long enough.”

The sound of footsteps, then Noct ducks into the tent flap, picks up his phone from his sleeping bag and looks between the two of them. "Am I interrupting?"

"Nope, I was just leaving," Gladio says, pushing past Ignis and swiping the bottle from the folding table. "Later, Ignis. I mean it."

'Later' turns out to be when the dinner things have been scrubbed out and Noctis and Prompto have bundled in for the night. The campfire has dwindled down to an ember, and they talk over the last leaves in a tin of bitter Insomnian tea neither Noctis nor Prompto will touch.

"For a very long time," Ignis says. Explains that he's watched Gladio closely, picked up on all the things Gladio does to mitigate his condition, keep it stable, under control, out of the way. "Like this, I serve better."

"You really think so?"

"Gladio—" A pause. "I expected you of all people to understand."

And Gladio does understand, but not in the way Ignis thinks he does. Growing up Amicitia means building a life, a self and an entire existence in the orbit of somebody else. The hanahaki, suffered in service, is meant to cement feelings that should already be there, and Gladio doesn't quite have the heart to tell Ignis now that it had been the wrong person all along.

_... and you will die for him, because you love him._

A piece of Amicitia family history: those who suffer the hanahaki in service rarely live long enough to die from it. But if it's Ignis, who has been by Noct's side almost as long as he has lived—Gladio isn't sure even death could stand between him and Noctis.

Ignis clears his throat softly and Gladio stands, hands curling to fists at his side. "Have it your way."

 

* * *

 

Later, amidst the ruins of Altissia. The flowers come with thorns this time, sharp-edged barbs on long stems that claw their way out of Gladio's throat. He clutches the rim of the sink until his breathing evens out, gets a towel to clean his face, and the white material comes away streaked with blood.

Ignis had told Gladio, in carefully measured words, what had transpired at that time. Pryna's vision, Ardyn Izunia, the Ring, and that in a fit of personal weakness Ignis had asked Noctis to consider turning back. Then he says, "I should not have."

He has turned away from Gladio, facing the window in the room that overlooks the ocean, and Gladio understands: love is not worth its cost, not when it makes you lose sight of the purpose. For all that Gladio's existence is only worth as much as the safety of the king he serves, never let it be said he didn't understand devotion—he knows, gods, he knows now what Ignis has done. Gladio himself would have seen Altissia in ruins with his own hands if only it would have kept Ignis safe, but that is not, has never been his choice to make. As retainers, their duty is foremost to Noct and the path Noct must walk, and nothing they _feel_ can be allowed to compromise that.

Ignis knows that better than he does, for it was Ignis who told it to him first. Ignis, who has turned away so that Gladio cannot see his face; who loved Noct first and best, who against the will of gods and men had reached the sacrificial altar to keep Noct alive, and paid the price.

 _It should have been me,_ Gladio thinks, and the grief that washes over him then is not unlike the tide that drowned Altissia's coast that day.

 

* * *

 

 

The railway transecting Eos' southern territories passes through Cartanica, then Tenebrae.

At the gates to Gralea beneath a night-black sky, the Magna Fortia comes crashing down on its own tracks. Gladio shoves Ignis aside and out of the way; gets to his feet, yells for Noct, and is met with no reply. Voice lost to cold silence it occurs to him that against all odds, they are still alive. If they wished it, they can still turn back now. They can find Noct and Prompto, and then they can run. Somewhere under this pitch-black sky there must be a place they can live out the rest of their days.

This is the same choice Ignis had faced back in Altissia. Gladio contemplates it for only seconds before Ignis gets to his feet, face turned in the direction where Noctis had been. “We have to find him.“ Before them, the towering lines of Zegnautus Keep fade into a backdrop of endless night.

"Stay close to me,” Gladio replies.

  
  


 

**Author's Note:**

> There was no proper place to put this, but assume the flowers are not a problem during the timeskip as plants don't grow well when there is no sun to sustain them.


End file.
